Senate Candidates Fire New York Mud Barrage : Politics: Incumbent D'Amato, challenger Abrams trade invective to the point where they alienate some supporters.

By JOHN J. GOLDMAN

Oct. 24, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW YORK — If the New York Senate race were a movie, it would be X-rated.

Vitriol is the fuel of the campaign--perhaps the nastiest in the nation.

The tone of the political discourse can be judged by just a few examples. Not only has Republican Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato referred to his Democratic opponent, state Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams, as a “sleeze bag.” He has called him a “plastic Bobby Doll” and “Mudslide Bob.”

Abrams, upon winning the Democratic primary in mid-September by a single percentage point, told cheering supporters: “I want to go to Washington to shake things up. Al D’Amato’s been in Washington shaking people down.”

He then fell silent for a month as he scrambled desperately for money. During that time, fueled by a $9.4-million war chest, D’Amato’s negative commercials rained down like missiles, striking at Abrams’ integrity. One spot accused him of “shakedown activities” in accepting contributions from developers having matters pending before the attorney general’s office.

Finally, Abrams fired back. In words he grew to regret, he accused D’Amato of being a “fascist” who spreads the big lie in the tradition of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

D’Amato took that as an insult to all Italian-Americans. Tears came to his eyes as he talked about the charge while standing in the middle of Manhattan’s Columbus Day Parade--which Abrams avoided.

Alarmed by all this, Democratic Gov. Mario M. Cuomo intervened. He urged Abrams to apologize, to take the high road. Cuomo also took a jab at Republicans.

“If it gets to be mudslinging, (Republicans) are better at it than we are,” Cuomo charged. “ . . . We are kind of amateurs, kind of crude. Sometimes we miss with the mud. Sometimes we get dry dirt. We put it in the bucket, go throw it and it gets blown away by the winds. These guys are good. They get mud. They make mud balls. They put stones in ‘em. They throw ‘em. They know how to hit you. If it gets to be mudslinging, the Republicans have an advantage.”

More mud flew anyway. How much? So much that when Abrams and D’Amato met for their first debate, radio talk show host Don Imus, the moderator, was forced to scream, “Cool it! Shut up!”

Got all that? Not to sound like Ross Perot, but let’s open the hood, check the spark plugs, jiggle the wires, squeeze the hoses and find out what’s really going on here.

In a state where Democrat Bill Clinton leads President Bush by more than 20 percentage points in the polls, some surveys show Abrams ahead of D’Amato by so small a margin that polling error could make it moot.

By all rights, Abrams should be further ahead. Before the campaign started, D’Amato--who has been plagued by ethical problems--was thought an easy target. Over the years, he has been scrutinized by such law enforcement agencies as the Department of Justice, U.S. attorneys in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, the Nassau County district attorney, the New York State Investigations Commission and the special prosecutor for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Many of these probes focused on allegations he improperly funneled government favors to friends, relatives and political contributors.

But the highly abrasive Democratic primary proved a minefield for Abrams. As Geraldine A. Ferraro surged to a lead in pre-primary polls, Abrams joined in attacks on her ethics launched by another candidate. The strategy helped Abrams to his narrow victory, but it came with a price. The contest not only depleted his funds, but its strident tone provided fodder for D’Amato, who charged in commercials that the Democrat ran “the nastiest negative campaign in New York history.”

Additionally, Abrams’ decision to go on the offensive against Ferraro so badly alienated the former vice presidential candidate that despite Cuomo’s urgings, she has refused to endorse him. At this point in the campaign, Abrams’ advisers fear Ferraro’s blessing, if it comes at all, will be tepid--on the magnitude of her opening the garage door of her home in Queens and whispering his name in the dead of the night.

In scrambling to overcome these hurdles, Abrams is tying himself as tightly as possible to the top of his party’s ticket--Clinton and Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee. It is no accident that Abrams’ red, white and blue campaign buttons read Clinton, Gore and Abrams. In speeches, he mention’s the Democratic nominee as often as possible. It is classic coattails strategy, and it worries D’Amato.

“Certainly, it will have an impact,” the two-term senator says. “But people know we are in a high-profile race. They will be able to make a distinction. . . . People are sophisticated. People take the time to differentiate it.”

One person with a very low profile in D’Amato’s campaign is George Bush. The President is the invisible man, rarely--if ever--mentioned. D’Amato is more apt to link himself to such GOP stalwarts Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and HUD Secretary Jack Kemp.

He also has gained the support of two old enemies--former U.S. attorney for Manhattan Rudolph W. Giuliani, who became incensed at Abrams’ “fascist” accusation, and former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who proclaims in radio commercials: “Two years ago, you didn’t reelect me. Don’t make the same mistake twice.”

In style and substance, no two candidates could be more different than D’Amato and his challenger. “The Nebbish Meets the Fonz,” proclaimed New York magazine in a headline summing up the race.

D’Amato, 55, is nicknamed “Senator Pothole,” because of his focus on constituent service. Recently, he staged a 15-hour filibuster in the Senate in an unsuccessful effort to save jobs at a typewriter factory in Cortland, N.Y.

His voice precedes him into rooms; his “Hey, how are ya” can be heard down the corridor as he greets supporters. He also is the politician who often teeters on the edge of an ethical precipice.

In 1991, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics--while declining to formally censure him--criticized him for operating his office in an “improper and inappropriate manner.” The committee specifically denounced D’Amato for allowing his brother, who faces trial on mail fraud charges next year, to use the senator’s office for lobbying.

Abrams gleefully recited his opponent’s legal problems during their raucous debate.

“He has not been convicted of anything, right?” Imus interjected.

“No, but I don’t think the claim to fame to be a United States senator should be, ‘Hey, guys, I beat the rap,’ ” Abrams shot back.

If D’Amato’s voice precedes him into a room, Abrams, 54, can get lost in one. Bland, quiet spoken, lacking in charisma, at first blush he appears a highly unlikely politician. Yet, at age 27, he won a state Assembly seat. He has been attorney general for the last 13 years, routinely winning election.

He has worked hard to broaden the mandate of the office--prosecuting polluters and bringing court cases in the areas of consumer affairs and antitrust. When Cuomo handed him the highly racially charged investigation of Tawana Brawley, the teen-ager who claimed she was kidnaped and raped by six white men, Abrams persevered. Eventually, her charges were found to be without foundation.

But much of Abrams’ record has been lost in the mudslinging with D’Amato, which also has obscured deep differences between the candidates. Abrams, for instance, supports abortion, opposes the death penalty, favors national health insurance and charges that D’Amato is a captive of Republican economic policies he says siphoned money from the cities. He is also on the ballot as the candidate of the Liberal Party.

D’Amato is anti-abortion (he also is on the ballot as the candidate of the Right to Life Party) and opposes a national health insurance plan. He supports the death penalty, especially for drug kingpins.

As the campaign draws to a close, D’Amato’s strategy is clear. He will continue to try to deflect the ethics issues and seek to depict his opponent as “hopelessly liberal.” He will stress his service to constituents while portraying himself as a “fighter for the forgotten middle class.”’

Abrams major task remains finding a way to present his message forcefully. In hopes of accomplishing that, he has been saving funds for a late television blitz.

Cuomo has been insisting that the tide has turned for Abrams. At a Liberal Party dinner, the governor likened Abrams’ momentum to an “oncoming locomotive.”

That caused veteran New York Democratic political consultant David Garth to later quip: “If that’s a locomotive, it was bought at Toys R Us.”

In New York State, it seems clear Clinton is the locomotive, and that riding that train may be Abrams’ best hope.